Everything's for sale if the price is right.
That's a basic business outlook for any firm. Name the right price, and this baby's yours. Make an offer that makes me a profit on my investment and you can have the keys.
So if some book-loving hedge fund manager wanted to snap up something like, oh, shall we say, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the deal could be done. That's pretty much what EMPG's Jeremy Dickens was saying when he mentioned that he'd be willing to part with HMH.
Wouldn't Barry O'Callaghan love a Happy Christmas? If he could find someone to pick up his little fish turned big whale, he'd accept the check. He wanted to create the biggest educational publishing materials firm in the world, and he's pretty much done that. Making it viable is another matter. If it means letting go of trade and keeping education, that's how things fall sometimes.
HMH Children's Division is buying, by all accounts, but then again, young adult is the hottest genre these days. The need to service a seven billion dollar debt is cutting into funds for riskier acquisitions, and no one knows how long this adult trade buying freeze will continue. What does this mean down the line, after planned releases are released? What's going to come out in a year, or in two years?
It's hard to imagine a large firm relying on its backlist, or even counting on a stable of literary stars who may not produce another bestseller. Can HMH survive without the occasional debut novel? Can they move ahead without taking a chance on an unknown who might just be the next Dan Brown?
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